Review: Cleo McDougal Regrets Nothing

Cleo McDougal Regrets Nothing by Allison Winn Scotch
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This book was difficult to finish, as it just failed to engage me on a number of fronts. First, the plot seemed cliche and predictable. Second, most of the characters were stereotypes with added traits that attempted to render them more modern or PC. Finally, I just didn’t like ANY of the characters. Not a single one.

I won’t again summarize the plot, as many here have already done so much better than I ever could. Suffice it to say, the conclusion could be written by damn near anyone who had read the first twenty pages. This predictability was fairly routine throughout the book, and so nothing that happened was either unexpected or engaging. I found myself thinking, “Pffft. Big surprise” and punctuating those thoughts with eye rolls. What was NOT predictable, however, were some of the nuances that ran counterintuitive to the stereotypes perpetuated by the characters themselves.

WARNING: MINOR SPOILERS AHEAD

Cleo is a woman who, according to her own diatribes, is successful and fiercely independent. For someone so intent upon being self sufficient, she sure lamented her lack of relationships—over and over and over. The other characters were cliches with PC attachments. Gaby is the strong black woman who values her reputation then sleeps with and subsequently sexts a white man she barely knows. Emily is a housewife who is admittedly and outwardly bi-sexual. Doug is a happily married gay man. Bowen is a gorgeous womanizer with a conscience. Lucas is a broody teenager, mature enough to call an ambulance rather than his own mother when he gets sick. Each is a caricature with at least one trait that makes him, or her, a bit unbelievable and difficult to “like”. Perhaps no character, however, is as unlikable as Cleo herself.

Cleo spends a great deal of time telling us three things. One, she is strong and independent. Two, she was a young, driven single mother. And three, that she has regrets. These three pieces form the basis of the novel, and of each page within each chapter. She repeats them so often that I almost gave up on the reading. She came off as arrogant, self-absorbed and unfriendly. The author does such a good job at painting her as a female piranha, when she tried to work in Cleo’s change of heart about damn near everything she has said she stands for, it falls horribly flat. Her “Only Forward” campaign slogan is laughable in light of the amount of time she spends in her past; her disingenuous attempts at apologies read as being only thinly veiled attempts to get ahead in the public eye; and her cut-throat antics never seem to bite back. Instead, every regret turns out to be a step forward for her. Though she purports to address her life regrets to “make things right”, she never seems remorseful and simply spins her mistakes to her advantage.

Overall, this took me almost three days to read, as I kept putting it back on the shelf. Once finished, I had my own regrets—at having invested so much time in a book that never really paid off. Three stars, and that’s being generous,

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